I say all this because when I was a teenager I pointed to him a lot as a bastion of progressiveness in America's founding, and often used him to argue that the US was not founded as a Christian state because he clearly wasn't Christian. The stuff I learned about him in textbooks and in school conveniently left out the much darker shit he did.

You know what, that's totally fair. Sorry for being dismissive, I saw the other commenter compliment your informative write up and I immediately felt guilt for being so dismissive.

I think to me I've always heard of the founding fathers in the opposite context.

What I've heard is the noteworthy part was not that these were a bunch of progressive, worldly, enlightened people who for some reason had these odd backwards blindspots.

But that they were a cruel, racist, sexist, homophobic, religiously extreme backwards people who are noteworthy because in spite of that some of them came up with these seemingly contradictory progressive views for the time.

People were able to intuit out that slavery was bad as an intellectual pursuit while still being insensitive and cruel towards their slaves. This is an unusual thing as people tend to try to justify their evils but here we have at least some societal willingness to try to talk about this and move past it.

Jefferson is not a man to idolize, I will fully agree, but there's more to his philosophy to be learned than simple psychopathy.

He planned on ending the slave trade, but his actions and many of his writings seem to indicate that he planned on maintaining the system of slavery for his own gain.

Yes. So you keep reiterating the evils he's done I already agree with. He did self benefit from slavery, he perpuated it because it was convenient to him and he applied a different standard to himself than he did others.

Him being a hypocrite is not what I'm challenging.

Everything I didn't respond to it's because there's nothing to challenge. He did all these things.

What I'm responding to was whether or not he intended for the institution of slavery to grow or shrink after his death.

Everything he's written says his intellectual desire was for it to "eventually" (meaning when convenient for white people) go away.

Which is kind of the equivalent of turning down the orphan crushing machine to a slower pace. Not even turning it off, just making it slower.

Yes I think that would be putting it in proper context.

This seems to also point to him be hugely racist and believing that he could use black people like cattle to get out of debt cause they were "inferior." I feel like what you quoted mostly supports what I'm saying. The dude perpetuated slavery for his own personal gain while denouncing it publicly to appear more liberal.

Read through this again with the following context in mind. What you said earlier:

I don't quite follow, but I personally don't assume anything about you. I do agree that lemmy, and the internet at large, has become a weird obstacle course.

What assumption I'm feeling is put on me is this idea that I'm not "mostly supporting what you're saying" when the only thing I want to clarify is what Jefferson's true intentions (intellectually dishonest or not) truly were.

[–] Hobo@lemmy.world 2 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

I think we're probably in more alignment than either of us realize. You hit the nail on the head in a lot of ways especially calling out differences in what we were taught. Down to brass tacks, we have much different life experiences so we're coming at it from different angles. I'm filling in the gaps that weren't taught to me and I had to discover for myself. On the other hand, you're filling in the gaps that weren't taught to you and you had to fill in for yourself.

In the 80s and early 90s there was a sort of veneration of the founding fathers where I grew up. There was also a ton of propaganda about how the, "The evil north just wanted to destroy the south." The cotton gin, as you correctly pointed out increased the demand for slaves, was reframed as a tool that would end slavery because you somehow magically wouldn't need slaves to to pick cotton anymore. Reconstruction was reframed as the North needlessly trying to punish the south. The founders were enlightened individuals that just didn't know that slavery was wrong. It feels kind of shit to go out into the world and have completely re-learn the history of the place you grew up because people didn't want to admit that your own country has flaws.

With that being said, I see how a swing in the other direction could be damaging. It sucks no matter which way to be taught just one side of history. It doubly sucks for it to be the history of the piece of land you're standing on.

I do find it interesting that it somehow swung that far back in the other direction, or that it was taught so much differently regionally (not sure if it's an age difference or a regional difference between our experiences). I think perhaps the best way to make sure we all stay on the same page is to have conversations like this though!

[–] WhatsTheHoldup@lemmy.ml 2 points 11 hours ago

Oh I'm definitely in alignment! You clearly have a depth of knowledge, apply healthy nuance, and insofar as we might disagree we would be able to resolve it through analysis of evidence.

I was originally poking fun at the lack of nuance in your original description but you've more than corrected for it in your follow up comments and i dont think we're really disagreeing more than that.

I was arguing Jefferson really should be remembered as a hypocrite, someone who behaved differently than he argued one should in the abstract. He dreamed of an imaginary world where all life's problems smoothly go away without him having to sacrifice much and it all just sorting out on its own.